Wreckage
by Terra7
Summary: He’s being slightly melodramatic but he supposes that’s ok for a guy who’s died four times today. Rating for strong language. Oneshot.


**Title:** Wreckage

**Genre: **Peter!Gen

**Summary:** He's being slightly melodramatic but he supposes that's ok for a guy who's died four times today.

**A/N: **Ava got me thinking about Heroes fic. Then she gave me the lyric prompt. Then she betaed this. Ava rocks.

_And of course having cautiously turned down the flame under your eyes  
There are more shadows around everything_  
**Parameters **_**by Ani DiFranco**_

---

It vaguely reminds him of the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray flying off a cliff with an animal behind the wheel of his truck. _"Don't drive angry…"_ he silently quotes to himself before the sickening impact of metal on brick.

He pulls himself from the wreckage of the car again, desperately wishing that angry was an option now.

---

The house is vacant. It has been for a month, but he hasn't been there to see for himself until tonight.

Arriving under the cloak of invisibility, he almost thinks he can see his own shadow in the pool of light by the garage. He doesn't bother to materialize once alone inside. He's not really here anyway.

He sits on the couch in his brother's former home and watches as the night seeps in through a broken window. It wraps around him and he wonders if this is some fucked up version of a superhero costume. An invisible man with a cape of shadows. He's being slightly melodramatic but he supposes that's ok for a guy who's died four times today.

---

Conan is on TV. He's dancing around silently, pulling at his hips with imaginary strings. The mute button got stuck three days ago. He's gotten very good at reading lips and wonders if this is some power absorbed from a passerby.

The ability to read lips would have to go down as the crappiest superpower ever.

Conan cuts his own strings and Peter wishes he could do the same. He wishes Claire had shot him.

---

He forces his eyes open at night, enjoying the lack of colour, the lack of anything. When his eyes are closed he can't help but feel the blinding burn of an explosion in a starry sky. Too much light, too much stimulation.

The blackness is a welcome relief.

---

His birthday and he's wandering around the (non-smoldering) city. He thinks he probably looks like he's in a daze to the people passing on the street, wishes that were actually the case. Instead he's hyperaware, sensing and observing and remembering but still barely feeling.

That's what's so discomforting. He's done everything he can think of to muster emotion and the most that will come to him is _discomfort_. He thinks that should make him feel sick, but well… that's kind of the point isn't it?

He feels nothing as he buys a cupcake from some local bakery. Refuses to light a candle.

---

He lives in extremes.

He frequently thinks that it suits him. Suits all of them really, all of these people who break the laws of what it is to have a 'gift'. As the shadows threaten to fill the void in his chest where there used to be a family, he pleads for a respite from the ennui.

The word sounds funny in his head and he rolls it around on his tongue, feeling the soft curves on his palette. "Ennui, ennui, ennuiennuiennui." He repeats it until there is no meaning left. The words are waves and he lets himself drift.

He's a dreamer turned robot and some detached portion of his brain finds that amusing.

He lives in extremes.

---

Mohinder tells him that he can't allow tragedy to harden him. He wants to be touched by the show of concern, wants to heave a sigh of relief and wallow in the pain. He wants to quietly thank those around him for their understanding and accept their words of comfort as he tries to move on.

He thinks instead about the fact that he has not been hardened. He is in suspended animation.

---

Back in Nathan's house and the electronics have all been cleared out. The couch sits solidly in the same place it has always been and he resumes the position he held three months ago now. The shadows still swirl around his ankles and he's almost sure they never left. They may have always been here, hidden beneath the heavy furniture.

He has the sudden urge to know if this is really all new, this void, or if it was there all along. He's knocked three legs off a table, shoved the couch on its side and ripped off the cushions before he knows it. He's possessed and it feels better than his consuming emptiness so he makes no attempt to control anything.

He finds the remote for the missing TV buried in the couch. It's hidden in a crevasse between the arm and the seat supports. He silently mocks the poor fool who will have to change the channel manually on his stolen set. In this moment he hates this lonely remote as much as he hates the day he was shattered in the sky and suddenly the world around him shifts just slightly. He hurls the remote at the broken window and only realizes it was intact when he hears the glass shatter.

There is no chance to ponder his first ever time shift because the next noise he hears is low and rumbling and reverberates deep within his chest and he knows instantly what time he has come to. He fights the urge to run to the window.

He sees the glare of the blast on the glass anyway.

It's distant, but it still surrounds him, leaking in to hide in each tiny pore of his body. He falls to his knees gasping for breath and when he opens his eyes the couch is laying in pieces haphazardly around the room and there is a rush of sensation. It's ache and dizziness and the mute is off. Hair is matted to his forehead and as he swipes at it he can feel the heat of the explosion under his eyes.

He leaves the house invisible, stands in the perfect oval of light on the sidewalk and knows there is no shadow.


End file.
